These newest complaints from Boerum Hill are of a specific nature, but interesting in terms of some potentially new obstacles that residents face. Here’s one:

I just came back from the post office to retrieve a package I had tracked; the information online was that a notice had been left (it wasn’t – or it may have been left at another house). This happens frequently, not just to me, but to others…I mentioned this to the nice woman who usually mans the last window and she told me it had just been announced that the carriers or sorters will write on the package that a notice was left “to cover themselves” – this was the PO’s solution to the problem of complaints about notices not being left. She said it “proves” that a notice was left. All it proves to me is that someone wrote on a box that a notice was left; not that a notice was actually left.

She also told me that from now on, if a carrier or sorter does not think an address is written “perfectly” (no apartment number, an incompletely written name, perhaps a first initial only, etc), then he or she has the discretion to write “no such address” if they like, and return it to the sender, undelivered. She said these announcements were just made. So it sounds to me that this is not a solution to the mail problem, but a way of allowing the post office to continue to operate badly and “cover themselves” in the process.

Just a little something to brighten on a gloomy Wednesday morning.